tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3082777836989045192009-12-31T16:27:28.523-05:00Gadgets, Linux, DIY, and MoreAlec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-67478668881269089712009-03-01T22:58:00.002-05:002009-03-01T23:17:40.096-05:00

Intro: I was surprised to discover just how difficult it was to successfully make a video slideshow in Ubuntu. This is really just a matter of package dependencies not being made explicit.1. In your terminal, type:sudo apt-get install imagemagick mjpegtools music123 ffmpeg digikamOr, if you prefer, install the 5 packages in Synaptic.(1.5 If you only install digiKam, it will not be able to

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-38197670846495385422009-02-05T12:55:00.002-05:002009-02-05T13:01:32.493-05:00

This may sound silly, but I was initially disappointed that Google Documents didn't let you create new documents while using offline mode. It's been said that this feature will eventually be implemented, but there's a really obvious fix in the meantime:Simply create one or more "blank" documents ahead of time. When you want to create a new document in offline mode, just edit one of these

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-2855358678598253672009-01-17T10:53:00.005-05:002009-01-17T11:09:15.896-05:00

It's hard to understand my father. On top of his regular psychosis, he also is disadvantaged when it comes to present giving. He never really understood the old adage: "It's the thought that counts." Instead, he compulsively buys random items like dolls and candy; anything as long as its at a discounted price, and give them away as presents. This year, however, my father truly outdid himself.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-83267786802661451912009-01-13T11:35:00.010-05:002009-01-13T16:59:48.484-05:00

I wanted my forum users to be able to upload mp3's and have a little flash player show up so that other users could stream them directly from the site (see screenshot).After a few hours of scouring forums and googling, it seemed that nobody had the solution I wanted (just a bunch of less appealing alternatives). So, even though I don't know javascript or php, I managed to put together this

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-64873682969654729372008-11-26T12:39:00.002-05:002008-11-26T12:40:04.485-05:00

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-85835331760730360862008-11-04T18:48:00.011-05:002008-11-04T18:57:10.533-05:00

Every time your candidate wins a state, take a drink.Every time your opposing candidate wins a state, take two drinks.If your broadcast station states false information (and corrects themselves), take a drink.If the commentator brings up technical problems at polls, take a drink.If you're still sober at the end of the night, something went terribly wrong. Take four drinks.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-4909744263629257332008-10-28T15:34:00.001-04:002008-10-28T15:34:56.509-04:00

Gmail, Gdocs, Maps, Gcal, Youtube, Groups, Picasa, and many, many more. With the list of web services offered by Google growing every day, it seems appropriate to take a(n entirely satirical) look at the untouched realms Google has yet to tap into.Having a bad day? Select "Grouchy" from the drop down menu and everyone will know to stay clear. GTalk will make your status into a "stay away" message

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-87130957846531384602008-10-24T09:43:00.004-04:002008-10-24T09:52:17.950-04:00

With Ubuntu 8.10 just around the corner, I'm reflecting on some lessons learned from previous upgrades.  My hope is that new ubuntu users will be benefit.1.  There's no rush.  I know, you're practically salivating at the thought of all those new built in features.  But remember, you have a working system now, and in fact you like it a lot.  It will still be there in a few weeks, about the time

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-81183548455838259672008-09-25T16:13:00.008-04:002008-09-25T16:21:57.386-04:00

[Edit]: I have since had luck accessing twitter. An odd fluke.Twitter.com and related services appear to be having some technical difficulties this afternoon. I was getting some odd errors from my firefox extension (TwitterBar) and on my blog that shows current twitter status. I decided to go to the main URL and this is what I found:Not entirely convinced, I tried downforeveryoneorjustme and

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-73483304473414604682008-09-23T17:58:00.004-04:002008-09-23T18:04:35.688-04:00

Here we have a chart that displays some disturbing figures. These figures were taken from the Budget of the U.S. Government. Every year we spend about a half trillion dollars developing our war machine. Our combined budgets for education and energy fail to make up even 10% of our Defense budget.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-29332695393406338882008-09-23T15:20:00.004-04:002008-09-23T15:24:55.409-04:00

Here are a few charts I've put together to explain some of the subtleties in my relationship with internet access. The first one here is a bit more qualitative. I'm sure you can relate, however.I hope that this information will prove useful for your own self-analysis.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-76621569295423809592008-09-20T18:30:00.004-04:002008-09-20T19:22:18.880-04:00

If you've found this post, I sympathize for you. This means that you, like myself, have been searching for a seamless way to transfer all of your various Google services from one account to another. The unfortunate news is that there is no such easy transition, but at least I can tell you what you're in for.Perhaps you have decided that the email address you chose when you were 14 is no longer

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-7640332543804404442008-09-20T16:19:00.004-04:002008-09-20T18:28:28.758-04:00

It has long been the burden of men to leave the toilet seat down after going #1, so that women do not have to move it every time they use the throne. However, we are well into the 21st century and I think it's time for more toilet seat equality. This gentleman breaks down the problem pretty well.There are several different goals:Reduce the overall number of times the seat must "move

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-27539221313571325432008-09-17T21:43:00.010-04:002008-09-18T08:09:50.092-04:00

Even without all those personal documents, the philosophical differences are very apparent. Guess that's what happens when you purchase your operating system from a giant corporation bent on squeezing every last penny out of you.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-20921561726076564982008-09-17T07:55:00.003-04:002008-09-17T08:42:17.237-04:00

For the tech-savvy and webapp oriented, Ubiquity seems like a great direction. Every Ubiquity command is like having a command line interface for your favorite web services. I've browsed through the herd and found a few that are either very useful, interface with webapps I like, or otherwise show a lot of promise.(note: I have intentionally left out most "search" verbs, as I find they are

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-12869280501220636452008-08-29T00:11:00.003-04:002008-08-29T00:15:03.959-04:00

That's right: humans are nothing more than ugly pickles until we tap into the lethal voltage of God. When humans become Christians, they too will steam and bleed their juices uncontrollably.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-13911394088757176162008-08-26T14:33:00.002-04:002008-08-26T14:34:32.908-04:00

I saw these signs in the back of somebody's driveway. I don't know if it's still homeless tea time or not.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-63422703058554217262008-08-25T12:12:00.003-04:002008-08-25T13:52:09.334-04:00

As some of you may know, I am a college student. Being a college student, but not having any real money, you could then conclude that I take out a fair amount of student loans (so that I can be owned by the system indefinitely, but whatever). Your assumptions would be correct.Recently I applied for a new student loan with SallieMae. While I'm happy with what they offer, their online process of

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-31705335053691376352008-08-22T14:04:00.002-04:002008-08-22T14:19:20.622-04:00

In light of the FCC's brief moment of enlightenment, whereby they ruled Comcast could no longer throttle bandwidth based on protocol (such as bittorrenting), I feel the need to take a moment to respond. In particular, I would like to respond to Comcasts backup plan to manage internet traffic. Comcast has announced a preliminary plan whereby "heavy bandwidth users" will have their connections

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-48691123985764448622008-07-22T18:57:00.004-04:002008-07-22T20:49:29.473-04:00

Everyday I'm bombarded with invites from ridiculous Facebook applications. Most of these are nothing more than passing around cartoon images, people trying to find out who has a crush on them, or ridiculous "political" applications that don't do anything to help their causes.Regardless, I wanted to highlight the few but useful or entertaining Facebook applications that I happen to use. There

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-4382166920550022172008-07-14T15:06:00.006-04:002008-07-24T18:08:44.510-04:00

[Update] For the past few weeks The Pirate Bay has had occasional downtime. In a recent blog entry, they referenced trouble with hardware and backup systems not kicking in when they were supposed to. The outages have been occurring about once or twice a week, but not normally more than six to ten hours at a time.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-52860772307650543482008-05-28T12:00:00.003-04:002008-05-28T12:24:12.562-04:00

Many people enjoy Lucid Dreaming as a hobby, or as a method of self exploration. While there is no guaranteed method to achieve regular lucid dreaming, there are some steps you can take to increase those chances. Here are some bullet points.* Don't wake to an alarm. Alarm clocks prevent good dream recollection, which is considered to be very important towards inducing lucid dreaming. If your

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-60373654696148855442008-05-23T10:48:00.002-04:002008-05-23T10:55:59.503-04:00

I was playing around in GIMP the other day and decided to whip up a new Gnome icon for Python. I think the blue and yellow icon is rather ugly, and short of finding something satisfying on the web, I decided to make my own.You can download the xpm file here.

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-58525948851429991982008-05-22T21:57:00.003-04:002008-09-18T08:06:30.656-04:00

I've found this to be a handy little charging device. I will break down my experiences quite simply into advantages and disadvantages.Pro: The battery 'pods' are useful to grab off of the stand and throw in my backpack. It seems to charge the batteries at a good pace. The "vertical" design saves some desk space. The light indicators are helpful.Cons: The 'pods' are rather delicate. The hinge

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308277783698904519.post-8556444414363950752008-05-22T11:23:00.003-04:002008-05-22T11:33:53.770-04:00

There appears to be a bug with a combination of Firefox, pulseaudio, and the libflashsupport packages in Ubuntu Hardy Heron. This causes sites with flash to sometimes cause the browser window to close. The temporary solution here is to remove the "libflashsupport"package.This will only help if your sound card supports mixing, as it will default to ALSA instead of pulseaudio. If this is not

Alec Koumjianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14452185281372582921noreply@blogger.com0